epa and the department of agriculture have developed a uniform preliminary engineering report template that applies to multiple programs. seven states have adopted the template for their use. epa and usday, the nation's drinking water and waste water infrastructure needs are large and funding them will be challenging. rural communities face additional challenges in funding their infrastructure needs, given the financial, technical expertise and coordination challenges they face overall. federal agencies with states should consider how to ease communities efforts to be taken funding provided technical assistance and better coordinate agency efforts. mr. chairman, ranking member tonko that concludes my statement. i'll be happy they answer any questions. >> thank you very much. i would like to recognize mayor joseph keegan mentioned by my ranking member mr. tonko. i see it's castleton-on-the hudson. i know it. the west point school for wayward boys. my alma mater. i know the river and valley real well. welcome and we're glad to have you recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. good morning mr. chairman and members of the subcommittee and my congressman, good morning, congressman tonko.

one of the frustrations i have seen in the last two years here is not just with the epa and usda but certainly there are many more but i hope we could as a house, as a congress and public officials look for more of these types of opportunities where the public can go wow that makes perfect sense. right now they look at it and i'm sure you'll do and say to and say you mean i have to hire the engineering firm to do the same thing all over again for another agency? so i guess mainly what i wanted to say is thanks for that. i will be monitoring that carefully to see how it works out and i know you will as well and mr. gomez i think there are nuggets of opportunity to demonstrate functionality of government in a way that people expect of us and we probably haven't done so well. >> is part of our tracking we do every year because we want to make sure those agencies are making progress and it's helping the communities that are in need. >> thank you for that and thanks to all of you. i will leave some time on the clock and just thank you for being so patient to hang around with me this long.

could you discuss the relationship between the epa and usda programs? whether there are overlaps out there and what about the efficiency or synergies that could accrue if we were looking at these programs making sure we didn't have duplication out there or anything like that. >> sure thank you. we have looked at those two programs in particular and also at the other agencies that have programs that help rural communities. with respect to the usda rural utility service and the epa drinking water srf, they are -- they do have some similar programs and we did not find any areas where they were duplicating effort, meaning they were funding the same project for the same purpose. projects can get funding from both programs, but they're usually focusing on different areas. the other things we're reporting on is the importance for those two agencies to work together to collaborate but also to encourage the state srf programs to work closely with the usdf rural utility service so they can get efficiencies. one of the recommendations we made was they needed to com

seven states have adopted the template the epa and usda are taking steps to develop guidelines with uniform environmental analysis. the nation's drinking water raced our infrastructure is large and funding them would be challenging. with those challenges they face overall. it is to ease the community's efforts with the right technical assistance to courtney agency efforts. that concludes my statement i am happy to answer any questions. >> now why recognize mayor atrazine. did i know the hudson. so with the west through its '04 reword boys. [laughter] i know the river and the valley very well. we are glad to have you recognized for five minutes. good morning. just a few miles south of albany on the date of the hudson river. and with that water association nonprofit organization i gotta call from the association on monday asking about my availability with a trip related to my day job. sown with the environmental protection agency to thousand 305 community systems serving in the 3,300. those utilities have to comply with testing as the big cities but would donate very small repair bays. we hav

will close with some comments on the federal water infrastructure programs and lead theleave the epa state revolving fund and the usda world development grant loan programs. we are very appreciative for the congressional funding of these initiatives and realize that funding can strengthen the nation notwithstanding the federal funding the regulatory burden continues to increase and become more complex. we emphasize the grants and funding programs low-interest loans often don't have the communities facing the most severe hardships for federal compliance leaving the funds to be used for compliance with greater ability to financing. we are very grateful for the funding assistance. it's about many rural and small communities to have excess drinking water and sanitation that would otherwise not have been able to afford without federal assistance. we want to be partners in the effort to make it as efficient and successful as possible. thank you mr. chairman and i'm eager to answer any questions at the appropriate time. >> thank you very much. last but not least the panelist is mr. stewart the executive director of the comm